This invention relates generally to large-audience, positionable imaging and display systems for the imaging and displaying of visual-media content. More particularly, it pertains to large-audience imaging and display systems incorporating image-projection, image-processing, and image-displaying, apparatus suitable for the communication, control and exhibition of live and/or pre-recorded visual-media content such as analog or digital video, film, slides, computer-generated panoramic content graphics and the like.
In particular, the large-audience, positionable imaging and display system comprises substantially cylindrical, arced, or dome-shaped, screen-displays that are each configured for display of panoramic imagery and in some embodiments are also configured for networked interactivity, or for the viewing and/or participant interaction with multimedia content featuring a circularity of action (e.g. panoramic games, races, or battles).
In one embodiment the large-audience screen-displays are positioned to be exteriorly viewable, and in another embodiment the large-audience screen-displays provide a dual-perspective viewing such that screen-content is both exteriorly and interiorly viewable from any one of a variety of vantage points beyond an outer diameter of the screen(s). In either embodiment, the large-audience screen-displays of the image delivery and display system can exhibit pre-recorded, computer-generated, and image-processed image content (optionally including synchronous audio). The screen-displays also exhibit live, multi-channel, or multiplexed, panoramic content (such as the video and audio received from a live multi-camera broadcast). The system can be configured having sufficient height and width to facilitate either close proximity viewing or viewing at a distance, and in the latter case, can readily be employed in arenas, stadiums and other large audience venues, including venues in indoor or outdoor settings.
Since the inception of motion pictures, and with more recent developments in projection systems for live and pre-recorded images, various screen-displays have been utilized to achieve a sense in their respective viewers, of being visually immersed in the moving images before them. The most common method used to achieve an immersive projection quality has been to project motion pictures, and the like, onto a large rectangular screen. Advances in film and projection technologies have since made possible the combination of high image resolution and large screen projection in improved systems such as those made popular by the international xe2x80x9cIMAXxe2x80x9d theatres. In the 1960""s and 1970""s Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., featured an attraction having a 360xc2x0 screen whereon a contiguously-imaged film projection-in-the-round was achieved. This contiguous cylindrical presentation was recorded by a ring of cameras each synchronized to one another and having a field-of-view which, was aligned next to images captured by adjacent cameras in the camera-ring. A similar arrangement of projectors-in-a-ring was utilized to synchronously project the film previously shot by the cameras.
Other innovations and advancements in projection technology for commercial and entertainment purposes, include the screens themselves, such as the refinement in materials comprising rear-projection and front-projection screens which achieve a more efficient luminance of projected images. Somewhat more fanciful seeming, yet nonetheless commercially viable, are the displays (albeit mostly static ones) which can be seen emanating from various lighter-than-air craft including large spherical helium balloons and airships each having a luminous lighting source contained therein to accentuate the messages imprinted on their semi-transparent skins. More recently, a substantial improvement in the quality of video and computer-data projection has been achieved by technology such as Texas Instruments Digital-Light-Processor (xe2x80x98DLPxe2x80x99) xe2x80x98chipxe2x80x99 and newer multiple-chip DLP projection. A joint-venture by Hughes and JVC (General Motors and Matsushita parent companies, respectively) has produced the Image Lamp Amplifier or ILA(copyright) Projector.
Prior to the release of these projector technologies, most video and computer-data projected images were deficient for outdoor and large audience venues. They had lumen ratings well under 1000 lumens, which required near or total darkness to be effective, and were rendered almost useless when even small amounts of ambient light entered the projection environment. Moreover, projected video image quality, whether live or pre-recorded, had a notoriously poor reputation, lacking in resolution, contrast, color saturation and brightness, especially when there was a presence of ambient light in the environment in which they were seen.
The new video and computer-data projection technologies mentioned above, have largely overcome these limitations achieving projections which deliver 6000 lumens or better, and contrast ratios in the range of 1000:1, and in addition, have made great strides in removing the pixel-grid appearance of traditional video-display, thus, further improving image-resolution and projection quality in both low and high ambient light environments. Emerging digital broadcast and High Definition Television (xe2x80x98HDTVxe2x80x99) standards and emerging HDTV projection systems further advance the quality and technological foundation upon which the present invention may now practicably be built.
Such means, as well as advancements in video (or film) image processors, and computer-generated multimedia content, also facilitate the practicability of new image delivery and display systems for exhibiting panoramic imagery, and multimedia content featuring a circularity of action, including systems that are effective in a variety of large-audience indoor and outdoor environments.
Prior to such advancements however, achieving effective, quality projection and display of visual-content required a controlled environment wherein near or total darkness must be achieved and maintained. This was especially true for live or pre-recorded video content projections. Furthermore, participant-viewers were restricted to the confines of such highly controlled environments. For example, the Disney 360xc2x0 projection and display system required both near or almost total darkness, and its entire audience had to stand and rotate in an almost fixed location within the perimeter of its cylindrical screen in order to see a majority representation of the circular panorama. Thus, the viewing audience was necessarily contained well within, and some distance back from, the inner perimeter of the screen. The Disney system was also subject to the limits of film production, and consequently had no provision for live, or real-time, panoramic representations. The audience""s proximity to the visual movement of projected images on the screen was also a problem, which necessitated imposing production restraints to minimize motion sickness. Any attempts to provide a circularity of actionxe2x80x94such as racecars continually racing around an oval trackxe2x80x94was also curtailed because it caused dizziness, and viewers had to continually rotate in place to keep up with the action.
Similar to the Disney system, other screen-in-the-round schemes have been utilized with a variety of projection approaches, including single-image panoramic projection through a fish-eye type lens onto a hemi-spherical or dome-shaped surface resulting in lower resolution image projection and similar types of viewing-environment limitations.
Such interior-of-screen viewing requirements not only substantially limit the number of viewers for each xe2x80x98showxe2x80x99 or presentation, they further limit the opportunities for other engaging and viable commercial applications. For example, arenas, stadiums, and other venues that can accommodate large audiences, do not seat or otherwise position their respective audience facing outward or away from a central point of focus within the venue, i.e. they don""t offer a convenient way to rotate a viewer in a seated position so as to take in a circular panoramic view which surrounds them. Rather, the area of focus of most arena and stadium venues can easily be seen by the layout of their respective seating arrangements, which are most often inward-facing and fixed in that position. Thus, the inward-facing /surrounding circular screen approach which, requires a limited-sized audience to be confined therein and to face outward, whether in an indoor or outdoor setting, restricts screen-views to the width of one""s peripheral vision at any given time and such limited-audience sites have not proven to be economically viable.
Visual-image media production and image-manipulation techniques have also advanced, due to new computer-based digital (or xe2x80x9cnon-linearxe2x80x9d) film and video production, and post-production, capabilities. These advances now include the processing power to render, in real-time (live), that which was formerly accomplished only in post-production, including the shaping, masking, cropping and edge-matching (or xe2x80x98stitchingxe2x80x99) of panoramic segments and the compositing of those segments into adjacent montaged images, or synchronous images forming a contiguous panoramic imagery. Such live (or pre-recorded) image-content may be further enhanced with image insets, composites, layers, chroma keying, titling, and the like. Other transitions and effects are also possible on panorama segments and over the whole panorama, such as: pans; dissolves; wipes; fades; and, cuts; and various other 2D or 3D effects including xe2x80x98keystoningxe2x80x99; skews; peels; and the xe2x80x9crenderingxe2x80x9d of images and textures onto 3D surfaces.
Nonetheless, the product of these production capabilities is typically limited to their display on some sort of rectangular screen or rectangular screen-matrix, or on cylindrically shaped screens that contain a limited-size audience therein.
With an increase in the variety of communicable video signals and increases in their respective bandwidths in various broadcast mediums including: xe2x80x98cablexe2x80x99; tele-communications; satellites; microwave and, other data-transmission systems and networks (e.g. the Internet, intranets, Large Area Networks (xe2x80x98LANsxe2x80x99), Wide area Networks (xe2x80x98WANsxe2x80x99) and the like), live panoramic displays, streaming audio and video and the means for participant-viewers to interact dynamically through these systems, both audibly and visually, are now practicable, between a plurality of locations wherein such networked interactivity can be implemented. Furthermore, de-regulations in the field of broadcast communications, and new standards for improved broadcast image resolution, allow for such new and exciting types of interactive entertainment delivery systems. For example, multi-channel, or multiplexed, simulcasts of a plurality of panoramic segments is now practicable to produce live, circumnavigably viewable panoramic broadcasts of major sporting events. Such live transmissions are viably exploited by the present invention wherein a contiguous circularity of action can be imaged onto its panoramic imaging components to render live or pre-recorded playback of Olympic track and field events, the Kentucky Derby, various oval track races such as NASCAR Races, the Reno Air Races, and other events, or even scenic panoramas particularly of a sort where a contiguous 360xc2x0 representation is desired.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved image, or multimedia, delivery and display systems to upgrade the visual impact of live, or pre-recorded, exhibitable panoramic content, and to provide practicable solutions that are commercially viable in engaging a greater number of viewers, or in engaging interactive participant-viewers. There is also a need for systems that are scalable and readily transportable not only for small indoor venues but for large arenas, or other outdoor system variants, such that the viewers can readily view, and/or interact with, such systems, and experience panoramic exhibitions that are substantially contiguous and circumnavigably viewable. Furthermore, there is a need for panoramic image exhibition system-particularly of live eventsxe2x80x94that offer engaging dual-perspectives from numerous positions that are exterior to the outer perimeter of such systems whether viewed in close proximity, or viewed from a distance.
Thus, there are a number of deficiencies pertaining to the prior art, and a new system, having improved projected-image quality, improved audience viewing, improved economic viability due to a substantial increase in audience size and/or participation is needed, and such improvements are achieved with the present invention.
Review of patent documentation has not revealed a large-audience, positionable imaging and display system of the type disclosed in the present invention. As mentioned above, many panoramic imaging systems are configured for a viewing audience that must be situated well within an interior perimeter of such screens. Such an approach significant limits audience size making it more difficult to produce economically viable venues. Screen systems that do provide an external viewing of a screen""s outer perimeter surface limit the viewing perspectives to less than 180 degree (for example, a perspective of a side view of such a screen). Moreover the prior art literature has not disclosed systems for displaying live contiguously panoramic content thereon, particularly of a type that would be acknowledged by one who is familiar with the art, as being of a good resolution, or of high quality. The prior art did not show a dual-perspective screen system for the imaging and displaying of visual-media content, comprising a screen configured for the display of panoramic imagery, and for displaying a circularity of contiguous action, offering dual-perspective views of an interior surface-perimeter and an exterior surface-perimeter on which, substantially contiguous panoramic visual-media content and segmented visual-media content can be imaged.